Differing "true leaf" Emergence Phenotypes

[andyb]

What I was thinking of would be pretty destructive. Basically, if you cut the part of the stem with the opposite leaves off the plant, you could slice up along the stem and through the base of the two leaves. Looking closely with a magnifying glass or hand lens might be enough to see if the two leaves came out of the same node or if it's two nodes really close together. I think the stain steve1 used probably stains either lignin or cellulose and might make the fine structures made of those materials more visible.

If you end up with more pairs of opposite leaves as the plant grows, it might be reasonable to sacrifice a pair or two. If you took off the leaves you have now, the plant would probably recover and send out a new vine or two from the base of the remaining leaves, but it would delay development and could possibly kill it.

You might be able to answer the question after you've harvested the seeds, by slicing or poking at or pulling apart that part of the plant. I don't really know, just throwing out ideas.

[Day]

andyb - Wow, yeah, I might save that for an end of season experiment. Sounds interesting! Thanks for explaining it further. I actually discovered a bunch of new strange 'first leaves' among my Calima bush bean sprouts this afternoon -- I'll take some pics and post them tomorrow. I might do an assembly line hack-and-dye as you suggest at the end of the season, so I can see what's going on with everybody. Because either I haven't been paying very good attention to first leaves until now, or my new backyard must be settled atop a radioactive artifact or something.

[steev]

We'll be all a-twitter if you get triffids; crops that walk to get what they need could be great (so long as what they need isn't us).

[Day]

steev - honestly I've got my fingers crossed for Truffula trees; I hear those thneeds bring in good money


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So it's not exactly 'tomorrow,' but I ran out of storage on my phone and yadda yadda. So anyway, here are the new 'OFTL' mutants I found in my Calima Bush bean bed. I don't know what the technical terms are for some of these leaf structures, so forgive the nicknames I've given them.

First, here's a 'standard' first leaf emergence structure on common beans, just as a reference point:




And here's a quad, a few days ago on left, today on right:



Here's a typical OFTL, a few days ago on left, today on right:


Here's a quad with a chicken foot, a few days ago on left, today on right:



Here's a typical three leaf with a chicken foot, a few days ago on left, today on right:




Here's a typical three leaf with a minor chicken foot, found this morning:


And finally this... thing. Also found this morning. OFTL quint+quad?



As always, sorry for bad/blurry photos or strange angles - my phone is my camera, so bear with me. I probably should have cropped some of these to be smaller and better shaped, too. I might go back and do that when I've got a bit more time.


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Also, in other news, the original Magpie bean that I posted about that had OFTL, well... no longer! The leaves that were buds in my last post did emerge as opposite leaves, but the next bud set it formed was a single budset. I completely forgot to take a picture, eep.

Which is curious, and beyond my genetic understanding. Or it's not genetic persay, and rather an enviromental response to... something? The only genetic thing I could think to compare it to would be the Agouti color gene in rodents, etc. Where the hair follicle emerges as one color, then 'switches off' and begins growing as a different color, then switches back on - resulting in the banded 'wild' look. 

[Day]

I'm at work so no photos, alas, but I just remembered that I never updated y'all on the Gete Okosomin OFTL squash.

And guess what?

After three sets of beautiful and identically opening leaf pairs, it is no longer following this pattern. It has started putting out leaves in the same manner most squash do, one at a time, alternating sides. This switch in leaf patterns also interestingly corresponds to the time when the plant can no longer hold itself upright. Which is to say, the last few days the new growth as had made the plant too top heavy and it has finally 'flopped' onto its side, to begin it's slow crawl & conquer of everything else in the garden.

So, not only did the OFTL magpie bean switch back to alternate leafing, but so did the Gete Okosomin. If anyone else has noticed similar patterns in theirs, let me know. I find this a very interesting and curious phenomenon.

[steev]

"Thneeds"? There are certain "tells" of parentage. I wasn't read to much, as a child, but what I read to my daughter is burned into my long-term memory, thanks to repetition (I prolly have better verbatim recall of childrens' books than anything I studied in college).

We had a white lab mutt named "Spot", thanks to those books; she had no spots, but we never told her, so it was all good.